California Trade

October 21, 2013 | By Marc Lifsher, This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

SACRAMENTO -- California has a new trade representative in China: Diane Long. The 28-year China veteran will run the California Office of Trade and Investment in Shanghai. The office is a joint venture between the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based business group. "California and China have maintained a robust trade and investment relationship, but the potential to expand that connectivity is limitless," said Mike Rossi, Gov. Jerry Brown's senior jobs advisor.

California's trade offices in Tokyo and London are attracting new business to California, Gov. George Deukmejian said. In his weekly radio address, the governor said the Tokyo office, open only six months, had already aided in capturing 10 investment transactions worth up to $70 million and creating 1,000 new jobs from San Diego to the Silicon Valley. The London office, he reported, has in three months received more than 100 substantial trade leads from businessmen throughout Europe.

So much for the new, "tougher" Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC, as the agency is known, is in the process of negotiating a settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the huge New York bank that has been accused of serial frauds against California electricity customers and the state's electric distribution system. The reported size of the settlement price could be as high as $500 million, which would be a record penalty in a FERC proceeding. That certainly sounds like a big number.

Each week in the Travel Section you run California Corner by Mary Frances Smith--a list of fairs and events throughout the state. I would like to know how I can obtain a complete list of events happening throughout the year. BOB PORTER Morro Bay Mary Frances Smith replies: I have not compiled such as list but can suggest a helpful resource. The California Trade and Commerce Agency, Office of Tourism, publishes an annual booklet listing events around the state. To receive a copy of "California Special Events 1993," write to: California Office of Tourism, P.O. Box 1499, Dept.

California's international trade policy needs an overhaul, Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy told the World Trade Assn. in Newport Beach on Thursday. Speaking to a group of 50 at the the association's monthly luncheon, McCarthy said that California's trade missions--in Tokyo, London, and Mexico City--have done a poor job of lobbying for state businesses. "Our trade offices are not very useful," he said. "People that work in them have to do more than just hand out pamphlets.

Proximity to large Asian American communities, discounted power rates and training subsidies helped persuade Japan's largest soy sauce manufacturer to choose California over Oregon as the site for a $35-million manufacturing plant, Gov. Pete Wilson announced Wednesday. Wilson said Kikkoman picked Folsom over Corvallis, Ore., despite a lucrative offer from the Oregon city that included free land to build the facility.

Gov. George Deukmejian, in a continuing effort to raise California's business profile in the Pacific Rim, announced plans Tuesday for the opening in Hong Kong of a second Asian trade and investment office. The governor said Hong Kong was selected over several other sites because of its strategic location "at the crossroads of trade and commerce with ASEAN (Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations) countries of Southeast Asia, Taiwan and the 1.1 billion people of China." "Hong Kong is one of the world's premier industrial business centers," he said.

BEIJING - Present your business card with two hands. Go ahead and slurp your soup. Give gifts to clients, but by all means avoid clocks and knives. These are among the cultural hints and etiquette tips that California's new China Trade and Investment Office offered to dozens of political and business delegates traveling here with Gov. Jerry Brown this week. The group arrived Monday, ahead of Brown, who was celebrating his 75th birthday. The trade office will open officially later this week, when Brown and his entourage travel to Shanghai for the official ribbon cutting.

Proposed legislation to raise the state minimum wage could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and harm the California economy, a small-business advocacy group said. The measure, AB 10, could wipe out more than 68,000 jobs over 10 years and cost $5.7 billion in lost production of goods and services, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business. More than 63% of the lost jobs would be in the small-business sector, NFIB researchers said.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown is reopening a state trade office in China after a similar one closed nine years ago amid criticism by the Legislature. The Shanghai office is to be funded with $1 million in private-sector funds raised by the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-area business group. The office is expected to open by the end of the year, and Brown hopes to visit China as the head of a trade delegation in the spring, the council said. China is California's third-largest trading partner, buying $14.1 billion in California-produced goods and services in 2011.

While Democrats and Republicans tussle over whether to repeal the federal healthcare reform law, employers and individual consumers have to make choices about how to cope with the ever-increasing cost of health insurance and medical care. The Bay Area Council, an influential trade group for more than 275 large employers in Northern California, offered some guidance on that front this week, urging businesses to promote a more affordable, higher-quality healthcare system. The new federal law will help on that front, the council argues in its "Roadmap to a High-Value Health System," but there is much for employers, insurers and healthcare providers to do as well.

California officials on Tuesday issued the nation's first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade plan, an innovative and controversial effort to use market forces to control global warming. FOR THE RECORD: Cap-and-trade program: An article in Wednesday's Section A on California's cap-and-trade program quoted Greg Karras, senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment, as saying that the program was "institutionalized environmental justice." Karras called it "institutionalized environmental injustice."

A tiny insect that can carry a disease that kills citrus trees has been discovered just blocks south of the border in Tijuana, sending shock waves through the California citrus industry. The disease, known as citrus greening, has already killed tens of thousands of acres of orange groves in Florida and has the potential to ruin much of California's $1.2-billion citrus growing business, industry officials said.

Gov. Gray Davis has abruptly sacked California trade representatives in three of the state's nine overseas trade offices, raising concerns that he could damage the state's foreign trade. Five of the nine trade offices have vacancies. Davis has not named replacements for the officials who have been fired or resigned. "These positions serve at the pleasure of the governor," said Trade and Commerce Department spokesman Mike Marando.

A voracious appetite for high-technology products, particularly in Asia and Mexico, pushed California's third-quarter exports to $33.7 billion, a 22% increase over the previous year, state trade officials said Wednesday. This raised the state's exports for the year to a record $94.5 billion. Mexico retained its recent ranking as the state's top export market, ahead of Japan.

There are long nets slung under the Gerald Desmond Bridge at the Port of Long Beach to catch the chunks of concrete that periodically fall off the crumbling 1968 span, which is built too low to the water to allow the new generation of giant container ships to pass beneath.

November 15, 2005 | Jamie Court, JAMIE COURT, author of "Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom And What You Can Do About It" " (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), is president of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

GOV. ARNOLD Schwarzenegger is making a high-profile trade trip to China this week. It's supposed to benefit you and me by opening up Chinese markets for California goods. But the guest list is a dead giveaway: Of the 80 businessmen, government officials and others accompanying the governor, about two dozen are big-bucks Schwarzenegger supporters who have together contributed more than $2.5 million to his campaign committees.